Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia is proud to host Greyory Blake’s Hive of Glass and its augmentative series of programming. On exhibit, Blake displays a collection of generative and static video/photographic works, collaborations, events, releases, publications, and bootlegs. All works are presented within their ongoing research and methodologies orchestrated to uncover new, creative practices that expand notions of trust, love, and cooperative meaning in an era of permeating isolation and individualism.

The central, thematic framing of Hive of Glass borrows on cadence and symbology present in the Orpheus myth. Orpheus, the grand poet, loses his love Eurydice on the day of their wedding. He travels into the belly of hell to sing a song so passionately convincing that Hades grants them both passage back to the living world. The one stipulation is that he is to trust in this judgment while not looking back at Eurydice as she follows behind. In Jean Cocteau's theatrical and filmic renditions of this tale, access to the underworld requires Orpheus to reach beyond his mirrored reflection in a gesture that can be interpreted as an ego dissolution.

“Spend your life looking at yourself in the mirror, and you’ll see Death at work like a swarm of bees storing up honey in a hive of glass.”

Jean Cocteau, Orpheus, trans. by John Savacool in The Infernal Machine and other plays, paperback edn, p 128.

The two gallery wings host a reading room designed in collaboration with Nathaniel Newcomb and a makeshift viewing area for a local UHF broadcast of the show’s generative video and sound composition, "The Bargainer's Song" (score: John Andrew Wilhite, voice: Greyory Blake, instruments: Chino Amobi, Andrea Burns, Jonas Cambien, RP Coast, Ulla Straus). In the crossing, one must pass the central, hanging mirror that also functions as an antenna for the video transmission. Hive of Glass beckons viewers to discover what lies before and after the looking glass, to look deeper than surface, to find secrets of being, and to risk trust in both foresight and hindsight.

"A village is a hive of glass, where nothing unobserved can pass."

Colloquial paraphrasing from Charles Spurgeon, "Omniscience” delivered on sabbath evening, June 15, 1856, At Exeter Hall, Strand and republished in The Spurgeon Sermon Collection, Volume 2, e-book edn, no. 85.

Events:
April 27, 6 - 11PM: cancelled
“Nirvana” Local Artist Experimental Live Soundscape (including: Ben Bondy, Huerco S, Rory O’Brien, Opheliaxz, Special Guest DJ, & more)

April 28, 1 - 3PM:
“An Exchange of Shifting Atmospheres” Workbook/Catalog Release with Ricky Yanas

May 3, 8 - 11PM:
“Spinoff” with andrea_andrea (live), RP Coast (live), & DJ Furniture/DJ Papaya (ambient B2B)

May 9, 6 - 9PM:
“Second Thursday” Reception

May 11, 8 - 10PM
Cop Tears (live)

May 19, 1 - 5PM:
"Soft Stereo" with Cyrus & Security Dog (ambient/jazz B2B & streaming live on Particle.FM)

June 1, 6 - 7PM:
Masina Frank (performance)

Further events to be announced.

Greyory Blake is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator working with video, coding, performance, design, and photography. They received their MFA in Photography & Film at Virginia Commonwealth University, are a graduate of the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art and the School for Poetic Computation, co-founder and co-curator of Office Space 2, and gallery member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia.